Free Digital Issue

Tenaya Masai

I’ve been squeezing my feet into climbing shoes for a long time and now they look like freezer-burned salmon steaks. These days I don’t care if a shoe sticks to glass like a frog’s tongue; if it hurts, I won’t wear it. Recently, I had the opportunity to try out the Tenaya Masai, a medium-stiff, flat-lasted lace-up made in Spain with input from world champ Ramón Julián Puigblanque.

I fit the Masai one size below my street-shoe size and they passed the comfortable-out-of-the-box test. My toes were a little knuckled but the toe-box accommodated them without being sloppy. On the rock they stuck to skuzzy smears and didn’t roll laterally on my foot or slip in the heel. With the foot locked in and the asymmetrical toe point, and maybe because of Tenaya’s proprietary construction method, these shoes were very precise on edges. Over six months of wear the Masai didn’t stretch and the fit remained comfortable. This is a great shoe for steep edging, vertical smearing and finger cracks.

Complaints? I still can’t onsight 5.14c like Ramonet. Also, I’d like to see the laces extend farther down the foot so that I can really pack in my metatarsals and get even more support.